


if your hands were in mine I'd be sure we would not sever

by nuricurry



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Existential Angst, Freeform, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22358836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: Alma is a series of contradictions, he is a mess of a person. Though, Kanda can’t really throw too many stones into that particular glass house; he’s not much different, pieced together by Innocence and spare parts. He’s a mess too.
Relationships: Kanda Yuu/Alma Karma
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	if your hands were in mine I'd be sure we would not sever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gravy_tape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravy_tape/gifts).



For someone put together from scratch, incubated and sterilized, Yuu’s personality consists almost entirely of spite.   
  
“I just don’t get it,” researchers and lab techs will whisper to each other in the hallways or in the cafeteria, “He and Alma are completely different.”  
  
Edgar insists that’s to be expected. But Yuu senses he’s disappointed too. It makes him hate Alma because from the moment he emerged from the tank he didn’t know much but he understood he hates to be compared to someone else.  
  
He hates a lot of things, truthfully. He hates how Alma smiles so easily. He hates how he always seems to be laughing at something like there’s some sort of joke he’s missed-- Kanda sometimes wonders if that means that he’s the joke, and just the thought of that pisses him off. Alma is the idiot with the skinny legs and scarred up nose and the inability to keep his mouth shut for a goddamn second. Alma is the one who should be the butt of the joke.  
  
He doesn’t know why one of them has to be the butt of the joke, but it feels like that’s how it’s supposed to be, that there’s some weird give and take where they share the responsibility of poor choices and various mistakes, that somehow that makes it all easier. Why does he think that? Why does he think that anything is easier with Alma, when all Alma has ever done is whine and complain and give him more work in order to pick up his slack?   
  
Alma is a series of contradictions, he is a mess of a person. Though, Kanda can’t really throw too many stones into that particular glass house; he’s not much different, pieced together by Innocence and spare parts. He’s a mess too. He wakes up some days with his arm falling out of his sleeve, the sharp, acrid scent of blood in the air and staining his clothes. He gets headaches, he hears a ringing in his ears that almost sounds like someone laughing, and it makes him grind his teeth and pull at his hair.   
  
One time, when he was disoriented by pain and waiting for the regeneration to start, with his legs at two opposing angles and his mouth full of blood, he asked Alma if he ever felt that way too. He didn’t always want to hear Alma talk, but sometimes he needed it, and he needed it right then-- not just as a distraction, but maybe a bit as consolation.  
  
“Sorta. Sometimes,” Alma said, his voice calm, but cracking. He had blood trickling out of his ears and Kanda had seen how his head had gotten slammed into the concrete. Alma told him about his fingernails falling off when he clenched his hands too tightly. He talked about how he sometimes got black spots in his vision, and he never told Edgar because he knew he’d likely be hooked up to a bunch of machines to figure out the source of it, and it was just easier to ignore it and continue on. He mentioned the times he felt a big, hollow emptiness in the center of his chest, a yearning for something he could never name, and a place he had never known.   
  
Kanda listened to him talk, listened to the lilt and cadence of his voice, which was so different from how Kanda had learned to speak. As he listened to Alma, he closed his eyes and forgot about the fact that they were lying in pieces on the laboratory floor.  
  
They really were fucked up. 

* * *

Alma has a bed. A bed in another room, a bed that is never made and that smells like sweat and the food he sneaks into his room late at night when the kitchen is supposed to be closed but everyone always gives him leftovers because Alma’s just so goddamn pleasant. (Allegedly. Kanda wouldn’t know anything about that. He refuses to acknowledge it.)   
  
But Alma doesn’t sleep in his bed. He certainly goes into his bed. He lies in it. Kanda knows that when it’s lights out and there’s one last round of check-ins from the researchers, Alma is always present and accounted for in his bed. But he never actually sleeps in it.   
  
Alma sleeps in Kanda’s bed. He sleeps like some fucking spider monkey and koala hybrid, weird and turned around and attached to Kanda like they’re magnetically drawn together. He sleeps with his head towards Kanda’s feet, and he wraps his arms around his legs, cushioning his cheek on the back of his thighs. His legs hook around Kanda’s waist and he can’t sleep on his stomach like he wants to, because otherwise Alma’s heels dig into his solar plexus, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t ever pry him off. Alma is a leech of body heat rather than blood, a thief of blankets and pillows and personal space, and even when Kanda locks his door and pushes tables and chairs in front of it, Alma still finds a way in.   
  
He hates that he’s gotten used to that. 

* * *

He feels old, despite the fact that he's only been alive for less than a year. Though, perhaps the term 'alive' is generous; he's had sentience for two months is the way he's decided to put it. He's been aware of his existence for sixty-seven days, but he feels like he's lived a lifetime, one that he can't remember, and one that doesn't belong to him.  
  
It's unfair. He has all the aches, all the weariness, and loneliness of age, but none of its answers. He is just small, and lost, and damnably dependant on others, in spite of feeling what he imagines it's like to be one-hundred years old. Every aspect of his life is a question, every piece of his existence is unexplained, and he's expected to grin and bear it. Keep your head down, Yuu, just do what you're told, Yuu, stop trying to be more than what you are, Yuu.   
  
_You are a weapon. You are an apostle. You exist for the Order. There is nothing else for you to be, nothing else for you to want because none of this-- absolutely none of it-- is for your benefit.  
  
_Kanda Yuu might as well not exist.

* * *

If they could have a doll synchronize with Innocence they would. Something they could shape and mold and control, a thing whose personality suited the Order’s tastes.  
  
There were times he wondered if that was why Alma was so different-- had they gotten their perfect model doll? But then, if that was true, then they wouldn’t need Yuu. They wouldn’t need to keep trying to make the Innocence accept him, they wouldn’t have any reason to keep him around if Alma was all they needed.   
  
Thinking of it that way made him feel a little better. Thinking of Alma as imperfect enough to warrant his use settled him. It was selfish, a bit mean, but Yuu was selfish and mean. That was what made him different from Alma. And maybe that was actually worth something.  
  
  
The topic was breached strangely, though, not any stranger than other topics that were shared between them. When you watched another person’s tongue fall out of their mouth and their skin turn black and rot, strange was relative.   
  
“We have hearts?” He doesn’t know why he is so surprised by that. They’re supposed to be human, aren’t they? Or some near approximation. Something close enough, but still able to be broken, and put back together again. That’s what he’s been lead to believe at least. But somehow, mention that they have hearts is like news to him, surprising and unexpected and maybe a little doubtful. “You’re lying. That doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“Of course we do!” Alma’s cheeks inflate with his indignation, puffed out and pushing his lips together, “We bleed, don’t we? What do you think makes the blood, dummy?”  
  
“That isn’t how blood works, stupid,” Kanda snaps back because Alma makes a good point even if it ever so slightly misses the mark, and he doesn’t want to admit that.   
  
“I’m not the one who thinks he doesn’t have a heart!” 

They fight because it’s practically instinct by now. Alma is the first one who throws a punch but Kanda is the one who makes it dirty by pulling his hair and biting his hand. They wrestle on the floor, gaining the upper hand on each other back and forth, no one really winning for very long before they’re pinched or kneed or bit and flipped over onto their back again. By the time they wear themselves out, Kanda is out of breath, and he’s got blood dribbling out of his nose and smeared across his chin.   
  
“Here,” Alma says, just as breathless, and when he reaches out to take Kanda’s hand, he instinctively yanks it back. “No, look, just--!” Alma tries again, and though Kanda glares at him, he doesn’t fight that time. Alma takes his hand and pulls it closer, placing it against the center of his chest. Beneath his palm, Kanda feels the flutter of movement, fast and rhythmic; the beat of Alma’s heart.   
  
There is blood rushing to his ears and his vision goes white when the thought strikes him that this is _so familiar_. Alma’s heart is familiar to him with its tiny pitter-patter, it’s slightly uneven rhythm. He wonders if it comes from the nights sleeping together, or the fights where they tear at one another’s hair, or something else. But he knows this heart, knows its cracks and its beats, and he doesn’t know how he knows it, especially given that he doubted it’s existence not a minute ago.  
  
The feeling scares him, and so he rips his hand away and Alma just looks at him with those big dark eyes, and Kanda wants to know what he knows too because it’s something that he isn’t telling.

* * *

_I love you.  
  
_It's whispered into the strands of his hair, murmured into the skin at the nape of his neck. Alma clings close to him, his arms wrapped around him, his body pressed against his, contorting the lines until they fit. It's said when he's half asleep when his body is worn out and all he wants to do is close his eyes and forget about the forced synchronization and the frustration and the pain. He doesn't want to hear Alma talking to him, he's so tired of the sound of his voice after putting up with hours of it, but he doesn't tell him to stop. Something forces him to hold his tongue and say nothing to his confessions and his affection.   
  
_I'll protect you.  
  
_Alma has blood on his teeth when he says it. His nose is crooked, knocked out of alignment, and he has burns and bruises scattered across his body. They'll be gone in less than ten minutes. His body will shed and regenerate and he'll be back to normal-- as normal as Alma can be, with his boundless optimism and relentless attitude. He's fallen apart twice already today, and Kanda wants to know exactly how he thinks he'll be the one protecting him when he can't even protect himself.   
  
_Don't leave me.  
  
_"I'm going to pee," he snaps at him, as he tries to yank his hand free from Alma's grasp, but his grip holds strong, and he refuses to let go. "Stupid! I'm just going to the bathroom!"

" _Yuu~_ !" he whines like a spoiled toddler, and the more Kanda tries to pull away, the closer he clings to him, "Yuu, don't leave! Please! At least take me with you!"   
  
"Why do you want to follow me to the bathroom?" he demands, more baffled than irritated at that point. Alma pouts.  
  
"I don't want you to leave me. I don't like not knowing where you are."   
  
That makes him kick Alma in the thigh, startling him so much that he lets out a squeak and tumbles to the floor. "Idiot! I told you where I'm going! I have to piss!"   
  
"You don't have to be a jerk about it!" Alma shouts in his defense as he throws himself up onto his feet again, just long enough to lunge and tackle Kanda to the floor.   
  
When he swings his elbow, it makes Alma bite down on the inside of his cheek and he spits out the blood on Yuu’s shirt. When Alma rabbit kicks him in the kidney for revenge, it triggers a chain reaction with Yuu’s bladder and they end up wrestling on the floor with Kanda’s pants soaked through. There’s something so completely bizarre about it, something ridiculous and disgusting and obscene, that he just starts laughing and can’t get himself to stop. Alma laughs too, but when Edgar finds them he isn’t nearly so amused, and so they’re thrown into barrels of water to rinse off before having a proper bath and ordered to wash their own clothes.

* * *

If he could, he would choose to synchronize a thousand times, over and over again, every day until he died, if it prevented him from having to kill Alma.   
  
Tearing his body apart hurt. Everything in him, every instinct and want for self-preservation rejected it, and when his body started trying to put itself back together afterward, sometimes it hurt even worse. Bones resettling, reforming, skin growing and muscle building, none of it felt good but none of it hurt worse than looking into Alma’s eyes while he pushed his Innocence through his chest.  
  
He knew the shape of Alma’s heart and used that information to destroy him.

* * *

It’s quiet. The sand shifts with a soft hiss, but that feels like the only noise around them. The fighting is hundreds of miles away, it’s on a whole different continent, it’s in a world that neither of them belong in anymore. He thinks maybe they’re both dead until he feels movement From Alma in his arms.

He breathes. It’s a puff of warm air across his cheeks, the warmest thing he’s felt in what feels like an eternity. Maybe it’s because he’s so cold that it feels so warm, maybe it’s because his blood isn’t clotting and his body is crumbling to pieces that any proof of life is like a boiling hot brand pressed against his skin. Alma breathes, and he doesn’t care about how the sound rattles around in his chest, and sounds choked and hurt. He’s still breathing, and that’s enough.   
  
“Do you remember?”   
  
_Yes_ . He remembers everything that Alma could possibly ask him about. But he still says, “Remember what?” because he wants to know where his mind is at, wants to know where Alma’s thoughts go when they’re at the precipice of their destruction.   
  
“What I said to you. The last time.” Alma’s voice is stilted, his words short and rough. Like a watch that’s losing its energy, and needs to be rewound. Except they don’t know how many more times it will work for them to be wound up again.   
  
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He’s a damned liar, and he doesn’t care. “Tell me again.” 


End file.
